Posted
by
samzenpus
on Saturday September 11, 2010 @02:02PM
from the bright-idea dept.

pickens writes "The Washington Post reports that last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the US is closing this month, marking a small, sad exit for a product and company that can trace their roots to Thomas Alva Edison's innovations in the 1870s. What made the plant vulnerable is, in part, a 2007 energy conservation measure passed by Congress that set standards essentially banning ordinary incandescents by 2014 but rather than setting off a boom in the US manufacture of replacement lights, the leading replacement lights are compact fluorescents, or CFLs, which are made almost entirely overseas. GE developed a plan to see what it would take to retrofit a plant that makes traditional incandescents into one that makes CFLs but even with a $40 million investment the new plant's CFLs would have cost about 50 percent more than those from China. 'Everybody's jumping on the green bandwagon,' says Pat Doyle, 54, who has worked at the plant for 26 years. But 'we've been sold out. First sold out by the government. Then sold out by GE.'"

GE needs to team up with Cree and retrofit their factory for making the next generation LED bulbs.

Yes! They need to think of the future, past CFLs, and start working on cheap LEDs asap.

Anybody know where I can get good 800-1000 lumen LED bulbs, that fit in regular A19 socket with 4" clearance (too many are 5" or more tall, and don't fit in many fixtures), and don't have a fan and heatsink?I'd love to start buying them, even for $20-$30 each, but everything I find is like 300 lumens, 5" tall, or has a fan that gets noisy after a year of use.

The LED light does actually produce significant heat. It's nowhere near as much heat as an incandescent or CFL, but because LED's have such a very low heat tolerance (heat reduces their lifespan), keeping them cooled them isn't as easy as simply removing the AC/DC converter.

No point. LED's can be driven off AC directly, you just need a proper ballast resistor in series with the LED. In fact you can drive many LED's in series as well using strait AC. A single rectifying diode and a capacitor could also be used to smooth the clipped waveform.

The only reason there should be a fan on your bulb is if you have high output LED's that require active cooling. Otherwise inverters, PWM drivers and charge pumping is unnecessary.

Some people can't see the 60Hz flicker. I can happily raise my monitors to huge resolution @60Hz, and only remember when someone complains my monitor is "jumpy". My eyes must "record" at less than 60Hz.

The Cree MCE can push 1000 lumens with about 10W of power. There are other LEDs as well (SSC P7, SST-90) that can output this sort of lumen count. However there are no standard type bulbs that feature it, as the problem with LEDs is that they dissipate the heat into the fixture rather than radiate it forward. This means that the fire hazard is an issue, unless your roof is made of fireproof material. Radiating heat into the room is a non issue, as rooms are usually large enough that this is not an issue. A small area just behind the light getting very very hot, however, is an issue.

For this reason I think that the LED problem is simply one of designing fixtures where the heat sink is designed such that the surface that the LED is mounted on has significant surface area facing the same direction as the LED. This may mean complex designs, but light fittings are already complex because interior designers are a bunch of loonies. Now they'll actually have a reason to make that room lamp look like a gigantic vagina.

lgw's law: you cannot make a comment criticizing spelling or grammar on the internet without that complaint post also containing a spelling or grammar mistake. This applies even when criticizing your own posts, of course. Also, as we say here: your an idiot.

I have two EarthLED bulbs, a ZetaLux and EvoLux. They were not as cheap as I'd like, but the problem was that the ZetaLux is too long (5.5") and the EvoLux has a fan that is already quite noisy when the light is on, after only 1 year of use. Only the EvoLux has the Sh model that is the normal 4.5" height like all the regular bulbs and CFLs, so it can at least fit into common fixtures, but the fan sucks.

I also have a Oznium.com X5 that is apparently no longer for sale. It's pretty dim, maybe a 40W replacemen

Please explain how the government mandating energy efficiency is equivalent to the government screwing us.

The government keeps your energy prices artificially low. I think that gives them the right to make sure you're not pissing away energy. Or would you rather electricity was five times the current price?

I actually might prefer that. But I also make significantly more than the average person.

The government keeps your energy prices artificially low. I think that gives them the right to make sure you're not pissing away energy. Or would you rather electricity was five times the current price?

No, no, and Hell NO! That idea is poison. The government does not get the right to stick it's nose into my daily life just to save money. My personal liberty is more important than saving a little money and fuck anyone who sells their own personal liberty so cheaply. At least hold out for a little imagined safety or something, geez.

Collective choices have collective consequences, they are a matter of collective choice: the government, which represents you gets to decide. You may decide to freely do whatever you want, and if one of your externality-inducing habits becomes popular, the government gets to stop it. Because that is its job.

Hmm... this sounds like "80% of the cost of your electricity is subsidized by the federal government, no matter which of many diverse local utilities you use", which in turn sounds a lot like "I don't know what I'm talking about"; but let's be clear anyway:

Yes, using prices to reflect costs will have better results than distorting those prices and then trying to replace natural incentives with a haphazard artificial patchwork of bookshelves fu

First, you have the problem of power factor, which means that with fluorescent bulbs, you're often drawing a lot more power than you think, it just isn't getting metered that way.

I'm sorry, this doesn't make any sense. Are you talking about reactive power here? Reactive power is important in grid control... but it is not energy. Energy is the issue here. Fluorescent bulbs do not, in fact, use more energy than incandescent-- they use less.

Second, you have the spectrum of light, which because it is balanced towards the blue end and because it isn't a continuous spectrum, isn't perceived as being of equal brightness.

Actually, the reason that fluorescent bulbs are more energy efficient is because their emission puts out more of its light in the parts of the spectrum that the human eye uses efficiently, not less. Incandescents are way too red-rich. (As should be obvious-- there's no way to get a thermal source to an emission temperature of 5800K, which is the sun's temperature.)

I'm sorry, this doesn't make any sense. Are you talking about reactive power here? Reactive power is important in grid control... but it is not energy.

I'm talking about the power factor [wikipedia.org], and yes, that is referring to reactive loads, but yes, it IS energy. It is momentary energy which is then followed by pushing energy back towards the grid (effectively), but when you look at the peak loading on the generator capacity, it must be able to handle the worst case combination of those reactive loads, not just t

If reactive power were power, then the laws of thermodynamics wouldn't hold, because the power in minus the power used (emitted as heat and light) minus the reactive power would not be net zero.

And again, when the power factor drops, it doesn't changing anything about the power used, it only means you're using more current and less voltage. This does mean the electric company has to have more current available unless they can use proper capacitive or inductive adjustments to work around it. And they are goo

That's theoretically true, but the difference between theory and practice is that in theory, there is no difference. In practice, no matter how bright you turn a blue lamp, you will always see it as being dark because blue reminds you of nighttime. Psychologically speaking, blue-tinted light is perceptually darker than reddish light even if it is of far greater brightness in terms of your actual ability to see and distinguish objects and color. And other things like skin tone are poorly perceived in fluorescent light as well, which contributes to that perception.

What? I literally started using f.lux [stereopsis.com] a few weeks ago, and I get to sleep better at night now. I don't get as tired during the day. The nighttime light isn't blue-hued; it's red-hued.

Also, blue light is daytime light. Red light is the light you see closer to sunset. The sunset is red for a reason.

2k bulbs are shit for growing algae, too. The spectrum is too far towards red with the lower K bulbs to provide adequate PAR. This applies to both red and green macroalgae, and cyanobacteria, for sure.

If you discover, as I did, that it requires significantly more lights to provide the same perception of brightness in a particular room, a 3x difference in wattage can disappear like that.

Fluorescents are 3x as efficient as incandescents. Yes, the efficiency is exaggerated on the labels because the bulbs don't quite put out as much light as the incandescents they are comparing against. But even if you correct for that fluorescents are far more efficient.

Heck, to prove it, just light up a bulb and touch it. Feel that heat on the incandescent? That's wasted energy that didn't go to light. Now touch an equivalently bright fluorescent bulb, it's only a little warm.

Power factor doesn't mean it's using more power than you would think from the wattage, it means it's using more CURRENT and less voltage. Anyway, changing phase like this (low power factor) doesn't mean that the meter isn't measuring correctly. If this were true, people would be strapping inductors onto the lines in their house right before the meter to get free power.

Power factor is only an issue for the electric company, they have to adjust for it. And they are adept at adjusting for it. This is evidenced by how the electric companies are very interested in you using CFLs, my electric company sends me mail about it twice a year. If the low power factors of CFLs presented problems to them, they wouldn't do this, would they?

If you don't like bluish CFLs, get yellowish ones. There are 3 colors, one is very yellow.

I agree LEDs still have limitations. I'd like to get some for my hallway but I"m not ready to make that move yet.

Dimmers are not suitable for fluorescent or LED bulbs, each should really be dimmed with a control signal instead of a rheostat. Hopefully this kind of technology will be common in homes soon so we can get rid of the buzzing from dimming fluorescent and LEDs.

The government is subsidizing your fossil fuels significantly. You don't see it in your bill, because it isn't being subsidized by giving you money to give the electric companies to pay for electricity. We massively subsidize oil drilling and production.

On LEDs in hallways and such: if you have several lamps in one fixture, you can put one LED and fill the others with CFLs. That way you'll get quick and bright light where you need it, and the CFLs follow smoothly, working as "floods".

Dimmers are not suitable for fluorescent or LED bulbs, each should really be dimmed with a control signal instead of a rheostat. Hopefully this kind of technology will be common in homes soon so we can get rid of the buzzing from dimming fluorescent and LEDs.

The National Semiconductor LM3445 -- which I helped design -- is a fantastic LED driver specifically designed to decode standard wall triac dimmers. It works better than an incandescent light does: I haven't seen a design yet where it couldn't manag

If you don't like bluish CFLs, get yellowish ones. There are 3 colors, one is very yellow.

Hmm, the thing is, all of the "yellow" CFLs I've seen haven't been a very good replacement for incandescents -- the yellow seemed "sickly and weird" rather than "warm" like incandescents.

I dunno, maybe they'll eventually come up with phosphor formulations that are more pleasant, but until they do, I rather like my incandescent lamp (only one, and only 60w, but it's so nice and relaxing...).

First, you have the problem of power factor, which means that with fluorescent bulbs, you're often drawing a lot more power than you think, it just isn't getting metered that way.

Bullshit. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.

Do you honestly think for one second that a power company would honestly not charge you if you were actually consuming more power than you really are? Do you think for one second that power companies would offer INCENTIVES to switch to CFLs if they were really consuming more power and were less efficient than incandescent lights? Or is there some other inane reason why a company would purposefully put itself into a position to be forced into building out infrastructure to support the power demand of all these inefficient CFLs?

Second, you have the spectrum of light, which because it is balanced towards the blue end and because it isn't a continuous spectrum, isn't perceived as being of equal brightness. To get the same perceptual brightness, IIRC, you are drawing slightly more power with fluorescent bulbs than with modern incandescent (e.g. halogen) designs, and approaching that of plain jane incandescent bulbs.

Subjective nonsense, and also incorrect. I have 100W "warm" (2500-3000K) CFLs that are just as bright as any 100W incandescent I've ever used, and they use a fraction of of the energy. Since the human eye is most responsive to green light, then physically speaking CFLs should appear BRIGHTER as they have a strong emission line there. Your visual preferences may differ.

And that's before you add in things like the increase in depression [fullspectr...utions.com], suicides, and cancer [reason.com] linked with fluorescent lighting.

Correlation is not equal to causality. That should be pretty damn obvious in your second link. Your first link also is not a surprise, and has little to do with flourscent lighting. It's well know that lack of adequate lighting over a period of time can contribute to problems like depression if you already have them. Incandescents won't help. Sunlight will. Locking kids up inside for 8 hours a day with no sun exposure isn't going to improve with incandescent bulbs. Nor will the cost of the massively larger power bill and maintenance cost for replacing the damn things every 3 months.

Regardless, if there was a serious issue I'm pretty sure someone would have raised it by now. Or is there another conspiracy in there you're just itching to tell us about.

We're getting massively screwed.

Yes we are, but not by this.

BTW, the government isn't subsidizing energy significantly. Maybe a little, but certainly not a favor of two, much less five.

If CFLs are really so wonderful then there's no need for the government to get involved because people will buy them instead of ordinary bulbs. But they're not, so they're being forced on people who don't want them.

You're missing the obvious point ON PURPOSE. The point is that no one will switch to a cheaper version that requires more initial investment, even if it clearly saves a lot of energy.

It has been like this for most more efficient technologies on customer side. Until the initial investment is either heavily subsidized, or the previous one banned, progress will not happen. This is basic human nature, to use the old thing "that works", and bitch about "new thing that doesn't work (exactly like the old one used to)".

Fun part: if you don't buy the cheapest bulb, but a quality one for a 30-50% higher price then the trashy one, most of the problems people whine about when they talk about CFLs and LEDs go away. Which again brings us to stupidity of being cheap.

Look, I have to live in North America for a few years. Now I can see the consequences of the absence of gov regulations on efficiency. The washing machine is a model which is technologically on par with the cheapest model on sale in supermarkets in Morocco (I shit you not). It was hell getting a cooking surface in vitro-ceramics. Convection oven? No can do unless you import it from Germany and sell a couple organs.

It is a huge joke. Of course they can't sell their junk outside of America: the rest of the world has moved on, and although the transition to ever more efficient systems meant the the consumer had to pay a premium along the way, the end result is that the quality of everything you buy is so much better that after having seen it both ways, I can tell you: it is worth it.

Because the sad economic fact is that there is some price people are ready to buy for any widget. If the efficiency of the widget is mandated, you get the efficient widget at that price. Otherwise you get the cheap to manufacture widget at the same price. This is why the US is losing manufacturing to China, and Germany is not: there is plenty of room in the high end, there is infinite potential for innovation, but you have to help it happen. And people hate change: even if the alternative is in all ways better, they will not change (think linux and windows). Change is social. There is a strong role of government not in innovation, but in forcing companies to innovate, through the means of efficiency targets, for example.

Look, I have to live in North America for a few years. Now I can see the consequences of the absence of gov regulations on efficiency. The washing machine is a model which is technologically on par with the cheapest model on sale in supermarkets in Morocco (I shit you not).

Probably similar to the one I had. Made in 1982 or thereabouts. Tub rusted out, so I replaced it with a Whirlpool. Made in Mexico based on a New Zealand design. I can't help it if you bought the cheapest piece of crap around.

It was hell getting a cooking surface in vitro-ceramics. Convection oven? No can do unless you import it from Germany and sell a couple organs.

My convection oven cost $600 and was made by GE (again in Mexico), though it was quite small. Someone I know spend a couple grand on his large one, which I believe was a Jenn-Aire, not from Germany.

> does it matter? oh were out of coal and natural gas, time to rape the poor people after they just bought 14$ lightbulbs

I don't know about where you live, but the United States most certainly is "out" of neither. The US has more coal and natural gas than it literally knows what to do with. The problem with coal is that it nasty stuff every inch of the way, from mining to burning. The problem with natural gas is its low energy density, so the only way to viably transport it in bulk long distances in quantities larger than those needed to fuel an occasional barbecue is via pipeline... and US pipeline capacity is grossly inadequate right now. The good news is that new pipelines are under construction... and have been for the past 10 years. The bad news is that they're still about a decade away from making a meaningful dent in winter capacity shortfalls. In the long run, though, if push came to shove, the US has enough of both to last for centuries... at fairly low prices, too.

I personally don't understand the fetish everyone seems to have with LEDs. Joules per lumen, there's almost no meaningful difference at room-lighting quantities between the energy use of CFL and LEDs. Heatsink fans aren't exactly powered by goodwill.

Fluorescent tubes are great when you need lots of relatively diffuse light. LEDs are great when you either need a tiny, tiny bit of light with minimal ceremony or drama, and when you need a fair amount of very, very directional light. They make great backlights, indicator lights, and spotlights. They suck for general room illumination unless you go to ridiculous lengths to try and herd a few hundred of them into simulating the radiation pattern of a normal light bulb. Both have their appropriate uses, and so do incandescent bulbs. I wouldn't use an incandescent bulb for a main light in my house that burns for half the day every day. I most certainly WOULD use an incandescent bulb in a shed where it might burn for 20 minutes per week, and a CFL would be corroded by Florida's climate within a year or two. Humid, salty air does really ugly things to CFL bulbs when you use them in conditions that are semi-indoors, but not climate-controlled (like sheds, garages, etc). I know, because the CFL bulbs in my porch light seem to average 8-14 months of life before they die... incandescent bulbs in the same fixture lasted for years.

Yeah! And if the EPA hadn't screwed us in 1970, the free market would still be happily pumping out cars that are a thousand dollars cheaper and run on wonderful TEL-enhanced gasoline because there are government-mandated catalytic converters to ruin.

Oh, and New York would still be in a choking black cloud of poisonous smog. But who cares about that.

This isn't that the market for candles disappeared but rather the government banned candles.

The candle you buy today isn't the candle you could buy ten years ago.

Lead wicks in candles were banned in 2001:

Granting a petition filed by Public Citizen, the National Apartment Association, and the National Multi Housing Council, the Consumer Product Safety Commission noted that some candles containing lead-core wicks can release more than 2,200 micrograms of lead per hour. This amount is about five times the am

Well, then, it's like lead manufacturers getting really pissed when the government ruins their business by banning leaded gasolines. Governments regulate shit all the time. It's part of the business environment. If you can't adapt, you deserve to get wiped out.

Yes, heaven forbid a government do something to force idiot consumers to save energy. Oh the horror of a socially-responsible government. I'm sorry you are so burdened by having to use non-incandescent lightbulbs. Such oppression must surely weigh on your soul. How do you manage to get up in the morning and make it thru your day?

No industry in the US can compete with another country where the wages are 1/100th of what a similar US worker needs to get paid for doing the same job.

Have you noticed the prices of any of the following going down to a level that a worker can can still have a decent lifestyle in this country while being paid the equivalent of wages paid in China which is less the ONE dollar an hour?

Housing

Land

Transportation

Food

Utilities ( electricity, heating oil, natural gas )

Clothing

Education

Think you can live anywhere in this country making One dollar an hour? Or anywhere in the UK making One Pound an hour? Or anywhere in the EU making One Euro an hour besides perhaps in a dumpster behind a Wal-Mart?

What kind of job do you have? i bet it is in IT. Trust me, if they could figure out a way to outsource your ass to China, they would and that person might be getting paid the Chinese equivalent of 5 dollars an hour. Can you live where you live right now and maintain your lifestyle on 5 dollars an hour? Yeah I didn't think so.

"When Congress passed a new energy law two years ago, obituaries were written for the incandescent light bulb. The law set tough efficiency standards, due to take effect in 2012(?), that no traditional incandescent bulb on the market could meet, and a century-old technology that helped create the modern world seemed to be doomed."

"But as it turns out, the obituaries were premature."..."The incandescent bulb is turning into a case study of the way government mandates can spur innovation."

"There's a massive misperception that incandescents are going away quickly," said Chris Calwell, a researcher with Ecos Consulting who studies the bulb market. "There have been more incandescent innovations in the last three years than in the last two decades."

-----

So it would seem that GE just doesn't want to invest in the US and instead make the same crap it's already making more cheaply in China.

Because GE was one of the big lobbyists for the bill which outlawed the bulbs made at this plant. Now whether the law was a good one or not is another question, but GE wanted this law. GE will make more profits on the light bulbs they will sell under this law than they could have under any circumstances on regular incandescent bulbs (especially when you can't buy regular incandescent anymore and they can raise their prices).

It's easy for stuff to be 50% less in a factory town where works are just meat and they work super overtime with no overtime pay. Also over seas it costs less to pay off / bribe gov into looking the other way over them breaking over time and worker rights laws.

"It's easy for stuff to be 50% less in a factory town where works are just meat and they work super overtime with no overtime pay. "

The reality of competing with cheap workers will require a reset so our workers become cheap. Productivity is high with few workers, but if more workers are to have jobs, they will have to work for less, live less well, and be like the rest of the world.

The main reason the US did so well for so long was it was the "last country standing" after WWII, which was the best thing ever to happen to the US economy.

Not to mention producers will have to lower prices to reduce the cost of living for those workers. That will inevitably happen anyway as the corporations economically devastate their own market for the sake of short term returns. Unemployed people don't buy much.

Actually what needs to happen for America to stay competitive with China is for an oppressive fascist authoritarian government to seize power and subsequently squelch all dissent as party loyalist pillage the country. Then we would be apples to apples the same as China and that future doesn't seem to be too far off.

GE is looking out for themselves. Making light bulbs overseas is cheaper, so they do it without one bit of shame. Which is fine, they're a corporation, their duty is to their shareholders. If their shareholders want profits, they have to do it cheaper.

The US government has duties to the citizens. Unfortunately this can put some citizens out of sorts, because the needs of the whole may be different. Sorry, but it happened with the buggy whip makers, it'll happen with the light bulb ones.

Hopefully these employees are getting retraining, education, and whatever other resources they need to find jobs. You can certainly differ over whether or not the restrictions of light bulbs are appropriate, but we can't just throw our hands up and do nothing. If you have better ideas, please give them instead of just offering criticism.

I would rather hear dumb ideas than just hearing that you think all ideas are dumb.

This is not a buggy whip situation. This isn't GE stubbornly continuing to make a product with diminishing demand. This is the inability to compete on price alone against cheap sweatshop labor. This is the Federal government failing utterly to do it's job to the detriment of all but the richest segment of the population.

Hopefully these employees are getting retraining, education, and whatever other resources they need to find jobs

Oh I'm sure they're getting something, but whether or not it's anywhere close to useful is another question altogether. Anywho, the obvious question for me becomes this. When all the basic work goes away, who's gonna keep buying all this stuff when there are no jobs?

In the manufacture of physical things it's very hard to compete with companies operating in other countries that have less worker protections, less environmental protections, and non-existent employee benefits.

Either we stop buying from manufacturers located in these countries or we push our legislators to prohibit the import of items manufactured under these conditions.

OR

We lower our standard of living to a 3rd world standard to "compete". Is throwing away your standard of living worth cheap light bulbs?

In the manufacture of physical things it's very hard to compete with companies operating in other countries that have less worker protections, less environmental protections, and non-existent employee benefits.

Either we stop buying from manufacturers located in these countries or we push our legislators to prohibit the import of items manufactured under these conditions.

That would be great, and one probably could do that through import taxes. Free trade allows for Co2 trading, why not humanitarian production taxes? As long as the generated taxes match the humanitarian help that goes back into the exporting countries, it would not be a blocking import tax.

This would get rid of sleeze-balls constantly relocating to the worst countries and help businesses (and countries) that want to act responsibly. But as long as WTF agreements are done in a completely non-democratic wa

I've not needed to replace a single CFL since I changed out all the lightbulbs with them when moving in to my current apartment 4 years ago. Perhaps your power supply is dirty? I hear bad things about CFLs, but the cheap ones I purchased were the best lighting investment I've ever made.

Either they aren't enough lumens (sometimes by a lot) or they are directional. This might not be a big problem if someone designed your house with floodlight style bulbs in mind but they didn't. So for MOST purposes, not all CFLs are the best option.

Once these two issues get sorted out they will crush the market. I believe they will crush the market so completely that lightbulbs will come with the house and will turn into something you get at a hardware store once every 20 years. Houses will be designed w

LED's fade but it should take 50,000 hours before the fade is even 25%, unless the light is designed terribly and the LED's are running hot.

Within 5 years most good LED lights will include closed-loop feedback with sensors that check both the light intensity and color and correct for LED aging by changing how the LED's are driven (underdriving them at first, and including about 15% red LED's in with the whites) so soon we should have lights that provide arbitrarily perfect light until they fail, which sho

If they were dangerous, the government would never allow them to be sold to households for such common use,
since lightbulbs are used in food handling areas.

We pick up and vacuum up the pieces of broken CFLs without hazmat suits all the time,
and no ill effects to report...
They get broken about 10% of the time when a bulb is being changed, a bit more often than incandescents, which adds to the cost and annoyance of using these bulbs -- the CFLs seem to be more fragile for some reason and break too easily, not sure why that might be.

"If they were dangerous, the government would never allow them to be sold" -- that's a joke, right?

Proper cleanup steps are only a two page PDF:

Cleaning Up a Broken Compact Fluorescent Light Bulb (CFL)Fluorescent light bulbs contain a very small amount of mercury sealed within the glasstubing. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recommends the following cleanupand disposal steps:Before Cleanup: Air Out the Room
Have people and pets leave the room, and don't let anyone walk through thebreakage area on their way out.
Open a window and leave the room for 15 minutes or more.
Shut off the central forcedair heating/air conditioning system, if you have one.Cleanup Steps for Hard Surfaces
Carefully scoop up glass pieces and powder using stiff paper or cardboard andplace them in a glass jar with metal lid (such as a canning jar) or in a sealedplastic bag.
Use sticky tape, such as duct tape, to pick up any remaining small glassfragments and powder.
Wipe the area clean with damp paper towels or disposable wet wipes. Placetowels in the glass jar or plastic bag.
Do not use a vacuum or broom to clean up the broken bulb on hard surfaces.Cleanup Steps for Carpeting or Rug
Carefully pick up glass fragments and place them in a glass jar with metal lid(such as a canning jar) or in a sealed plastic bag.
Use sticky tape, such as duct tape, to pick up any remaining small glassfragments and powder.
If vacuuming is needed after all visible materials are removed, vacuum the areawhere the bulb was broken.
Remove the vacuum bag (or empty and wipe the canister), and put the bag orvacuum debris in a sealed plastic bag.Cleanup Steps for Clothing, Bedding and Other Soft Materials
If clothing or bedding materials come in direct contact with broken glass ormercurycontaining powder from inside the bulb that may stick to the fabric, theclothing or bedding should be thrown away. Do not wash such clothing orbedding because mercury fragments in the clothing may contaminate themachine and/or pollute sewage.
You can, however, wash clothing or other materials that have been exposed tothe mercury vapor from a broken CFL, such as the clothing you are wearing whenU.S. Environmental Protection Agency June 2010you cleaned up the broken CFL, as long as that clothing has not come into directcontact with the materials from the broken bulb.
If shoes come into direct contact with broken glass or mercurycontainingpowder from the bulb, wipe them off with damp paper towels or disposable wetwipes. Place the towels or wipes in a glass jar or plastic bag for disposal.Disposal of Cleanup Materials
Immediately place all cleanup materials outdoors in a trash container orprotected area for the next normal trash pickup.
Wash your hands after disposing of the jars or plastic bags containing cleanupmaterials.
Check with your local or state government about disposal requirements in yourspecific area. Some states do not allow such trash disposal. Instead, they requirethat broken and unbroken mercurycontaining bulbs be taken to a local recyclingcenter.Future Cleaning of Carpeting or Rug: Air Out the Room During and After Vacuuming
The next several times you vacuum, shut off the central forcedair heating/airconditioning system and open a window before vacuuming.
Keep the central heating/air conditioning system shut off and the window openfor at least 15 minutes after vacuuming is completed.

While I agree with the intent behind this legislation, the problem is that there are a few applications where CFLs simply are NOT good.

An example is closet and bathroom lights. The CFL makers themselves say not to use the CFLs in areas where you'll be switching the light on only for a few seconds or a couple of minutes. This wear causes them to fail very quickly, totally negating any efficiency advantage.

Livingroom lights, great - closet, a waste.Also, things like garage lights in cold climates - a CFL can take 20 minutes to get up to usable brightness when it's 5 degrees out. Doesn't matter to people in CA or FL, but in upstate NY and MN that's a problem.

marking a small, sad exit for a product and company that can trace their roots to Thomas Alva Edison's innovations in the 1870s.

In other news GE has sold their buggy whip division...

This is not sad news except maybe for the employees who work there. Incandescent bulbs are a technology which has seen its day but it's day is pretty much at an end. They'll continue to be manufactured for some time but not by GE. Anyone who would expect GE to continue to manufacture an obsolete product with rapidly dwindling market share is a moron. The growth opportunities in lighting are with newer technology such as CFL and LED lighting. This is not something to shed a single tear over. Sentimentality in a situation like this is just bizarre.

"The Washington Post reports that last major GE factory making ordinary incandescent light bulbs in the US is closing this month, marking a small, sad exit for a product and company that can trace their roots to Thomas Alva Edison's innovations in the 1870s.

What I don't get is this: if China can produce CFLs at half the price (which doesn't surprise me), then why couldn't they also produce incandescents at half the price? In other words, why hadn't the plant closed long before the advent of CFLs?

What I don't get is this: if China can produce CFLs at half the price (which doesn't surprise me), then why couldn't they also produce incandescents at half the price?

They probably could, if you ignore the startup costs of the plant. But if you've already got a US-based plant, the startup costs of that plant are sunk and don't figure into a comparison with foreign plants. OTOH, when you would either need to convert the local plant or start a foreign plant, the conversion costs of the local plant do need to

What I don't get is this: if China can produce CFLs at half the price (which doesn't surprise me), then why couldn't they also produce incandescents at half the price? In other words, why hadn't the plant closed long before the advent of CFLs?

My guess is that incandescent bulbs can be made cheaply both in the USA and in China because they contain no environmental pollutants, whereas CFLs, on the other hand, contain mercury, and it's probable that the environmental regulations in China are sufficiently loose to allow them to streamline the manufacturing process in ways that simply cannot be done legally in the USA.

Basically the government outlawed light bulbs that are not currently encumbered by a patent. The purpose of this law was not to increase energy efficiency but to increase corporate profits. All of the light bulbs that meet the new energy efficiency standards are covered by current patents. The companies that hold those patents were not able to make as much profit on those light bulbs as they wished because they had to compete with standard incandescent light bulbs. So they got together with the environment

Your last argument is ridiculous. Every bit counts, just because one thing isn't done doesn't mean another thing done isn't useful.

And by they way they ARE mandating better fuel standards. The CAFE (required fuel economy average of cars sold) goes up 2.5mpg next year (first raise in a decade) and will go up another 4.8mpg over the next 8 years.

Of the bill, maybe, but of energy usage, it's about 12%, of a residential pie that is itself about 20% of U.S. energy usage. So residential lighting is about 2 1/2% of U.S. energy usage, and from the best category of energy usage (electricity).

Passenger cars use about 14% of the energy in the US. You would like to increase fuel economy average in cars 5mpg. This would reduce that energy use about 15% (5mpg out of 32mpg). That's an energy reduction of 2.2%.

So you ridicule one mandate as trivially small and suggest one that is only 25% larger as the real answer? Especially when the lighting one can be much more easily implemented as it is much easier and cheaper to replace light bulbs than to replace your car.

FWIW, I think thermostat threshholds aren't actually entirely ridiculous. For residential usage I imagine there'd be a backlash, but there's no reason so many square feet of office space have to be a/c'd to 72 or even 70 constantly.

For home energy usage, though, why micromanage what I do within my energy budget, so long as my total energy usage is quite low? I personally hate CFLs for reading, and I don't think my three total incandescent bulbs (225W total when all on) are really killing the environment. That's why I think just going by total usage is more fair. If my neighbor wants to run a ridiculous thermostat and television, and I don't, why can't I use my energy savings on something I prefer? My whole apartment probably uses less than 50% of the average energy around here, so I'd pass any actually objective threshholds anyone chose to impose.

But with this per-item efficiency thing, I can't run 225W of incandescent bulbs, but my neighbor can run 2000W of home-theater equipment? How is that fair or pro-environment?

I already do have the right to burn as much energy unnecessarily as I want, though. The government didn't even ban most of the bigger ones; they banned a really tiny one that seems to be mostly out of image and spite.

To use your example, driving old cars is not banned, and they're even grandfathered in from just about all newer regulations. Running an unnecessarily ridiculous 500 Watt home computer is not banned. Keeping your home air-conditioned to 72 degrees (which many peopl actually do) is not banned either. Buying a Hummer 2 to go grocery shopping isn't banned. Installing single-paned windows isn't banned. Etc., etc.

Plus in my particular case, incandescent bulbs are around 100% efficient. I live in an area with a climate that's around 50-60 most of the year, which is cool enough to need some heating, but not cold enough to be worth the expense of getting a gas furnace installed. So I use a moderate amount of electrical heating to keep it up around the mid-60s (I don't really mind it being somewhat cool). Any "waste heat" from bulbs, the stove, or the computer substitutes 1-for-1 for the electrical heater.

Not only that, but you can get a 3x improvement in efficiency by replacing those inefficient electrical resistance based heaters with a heat-pump.

A standard 90% efficient gas furnace will also be more energy efficient than electrical resistance heating (since the best power plants are only about 60% efficient and most of our electricity currently comes from burning fossil fuels.

Now - if you life in an area where most of your electricity is generated from renewables or nuclear - that changes things a bit.

Even with the most conservative estimates for mercury output and the proportion of power generated by coal and the most unforgiving ones for CFL mercury content and power savings, the power saved by CFLs results in less mercury being released into the environment than they could themselves release.

These bulbs are far from environmentally friendly or “so called green” and is another example of how foolish laws attempting to “manage” people’s behavior create more long term problems. Each bulb contains about 5 milligrams (mg) of mercury, a toxic heavy metal that can interfere with the development of children and unborn fetuses and may cause a wide range of health issues in adults, including brain, kidney and liver damage.

The mercury released from a CFLs deposited in a landfill if they aren't recycled is, with the current electricity generating mix in the US, less than the average quantity of mercury released into the environment from electricity generation (burning coal) to supply the additional energy consumed to power incandescent bulbs over CFLs. (Source [energystar.gov])

I personally would rather live with the consequences of the incandescent lamp for a while longer.

You are not supposed to be throwing them into landfills. The labels on the back of the packaging say that. Its easy to recycle them. When I buy new CFLs from Lowes, I bring the old ones in and drop them off at the front desk. End of story.

In 3 to 5 years when all the CFLs start dying, there will be a huge furor over the mercury they contain leeching into landfills.

In 3 to 5 years when all the CFLs start dying, there will be a huge furor over the mercury they contain leeching into landfills.

Or not.

In the United States, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated that if all 270 million compact fluorescent lamps sold in 2007 were sent to landfill sites, that this would represent around 0.13 metric tons, or 0.1% of all U.S. emissions of mercury (around 104 metric tons that year.)Compact fluorescent lamp [wikipedia.org]

I think if you add a resistor in series with the halogen bulb you may be able to bring the temperature down enough so that the color is the same as that of a regular incandescent bulb. I know that running halogens at too low temperature shortens their life, but a small decrease actually increases the life.

Any adult working a minimum wage job in the US qualifies for public assistance in a variety of ways. Employers who pay this wage are effectively being subsidized by the government.

There is no benefit to the US economy to have subsidized businesses operating in its economy. And subsidized low wage employees are a disincentive to capital investment to improve the productivity of workers, which is ultimately a drag on the economy.

China's low wages, effectively managed by excessively low Yuan valuation are a big disincentive to modernization there. Eventually I am sure that China will realize that mercantilism on the scale they are attempting won't work - you can't drag 1.3 billion people to modern consumer lifestyles by selling cheap light bulbs to a country with a population of 300 million.

We just don't need that many light bulbs.

And building an economic model based on sub min wage workers who are government subsidized so they won't starve is flat out stupid.

I can only speak to what I see as an importer, and nothing in that article reflects the reality of my business, my customers, my competitors, or my vendors. I wonder if those very large companies are getting some sort of tax breaks or environmental waivers for moving to the U.S. Also not explained is that China is monthly beating its own exporting records.

There are some products where labor is not the primary cost of concern. Mechanized production is generally the same price everywhere in the world as th

Nonsense. I put a CFL light over my front porch stairs 8 years ago, and it still works fine despite being exposed outdoor temperature extremes. It's been on an average of 6 hours per day, saving 45W over the equivalent incandescent bulb. That adds up to a savings of 790kWh (2800MJ). Since it typically takes about 3 joules of thermal energy in a coal plant to deliver 1 joule of electricity to the consumer, that corresponds to 8500MJ, or almost 1000 pounds of coal saved by this single light bulb.

What is the cost, in MJ, of the recycling of the CFL bulbs vs simple disposal of the incandescent bulbs?

I'll bet it's less than the cost of making half a dozen new incandescent bulbs that would have burned out in the mean time, especially since the raw materials get reused instead of refined from scratch.

But try to use a little common sense before you ask strawman questions. Do you really think that it takes a 1000 lb pile of coal to recycle 3 ounces of material?

What is the environmental cost of the increased mercury being added to our landfills (for those who don't properly recycle)?

Less than the environmental cost of the larger amount of mercury in the coal would have released freely into the atmosphere.